Thing #13: Online Productivity Tools

Customized Start Page:

iGoogle:  I played around with this at work last year and chose a few things like weather.  I don't use it now, though. 

PageFlakes:  kind of scary--when I went to the PageFlakes site, it had my town listed as my location.  I don't like the fact that before signing up, they know where I live.  The site looks attractive, though.

MyYahoo: ok, and I'd use it if I had Yahoo email, but my Comcast home page has what I really want--a link to my email and top news stories.  I have the ability to customize my Comcast page as well.

I downloaded a few widgets on my Mac that I use: calendar, weather, calculator.  One click to my Dashboard at the bottom of the screen brings them up.  Macs have all kinds of widgets for the Dashboard, but I don't need many.  Putting RSS on there might be ok, but on my Mac, I have RSS feeds at the top of my screen for individual sites.  I'm a little cautious about downloading widgets; I don't know if they could potentially contain security holes or spyware.  At work, we aren't supposed to download anything to our computers.

Calendar:

I use my Outlook calendar at work.  I really like it.  I like the reminder feature which helps to keep me posted on my schedule, if I haven't checked my paper calendar.  I don't think I'll use another calendar besides that.

I think that an online calendar would be really useful if you were part of an organization where multiple people needed to keep track of meetings & other activities.  I like the look of Google Calendar.

List Tools:

Ta-da Lists is ok, although I'm at the point that I don't think I want any more applications to log onto unless it's really great or something I'd use.  Maybe if I had a web phone like iPhone where you can quickly bring up the site, it would be useful.     I don't think I'd use this to create a booklist, as they show.  Other sites or applications might be better for that.

Remember The Milk looks interesting in that you can have it RSS you with reminders.  If you got your RSS on a web phone, it might be nice to get reminders this way.  I could actually see a use for having reminders on the go.  Since I don't use my cell phone that much, and it's not web enabled, I won't use this feature at this time.

Backpack looks useful for group collaboration.  You could have a shared calendar, files, lists, etc., for everyone in your group to access.  Google Sites probably has similar features now since it can be used for collaboration and other Google apps can be imported. 

Right now, I sometimes make a task list in my Outlook email/calendar.  Or I put it on my Outlook calendar with a reminder date/time.

Other:

PDF converters:  I don't need this at home since my Mac has a built-in PDF saving feature.  Might be useful at work since we don't have that option.

TinyURL:  I have used this for a few months and like it.  Works well in applications, such as email, where a broken URL on different lines won't work when clicked.

Mindmapping tools:  I am interested in this.  I dabble in writing a bit and have considered purchasing a program to stimulate thoughts and creativity.  Mindomo looks interesting and it's free for a basic account.

Gliffy looks useful for flowcharting.  You can embed your work into office apps or a wiki.

GrandCentral (Google) offers one phone # that will ring all your phones and have one voicemail box.  It has lots of other features as well.

I had to laugh at Anxiety, an anxiety task manager.  I was hopeful that it would manage my anxiety... but alas, it was not to be.

Lifehacker looks interesting, the kind of site I might enjoy.  I'll have to RSS this one. 

I don't know if Content Management Systems (CMS) fall under online productivity tools, but there was a lot of discussion at Internet Librarian conference about CMS options such as Joomla! and Drupal.    They can be used for building public web pages and staff intranets.  They have various add-on modules for all kinds of library features as well.  They're both free and open-source.

Final Comment:

The problem with online productivity tools is that we aren't allowed to download anything to our staff or public PCs, so unless something is web-based, without software downloads required, none of these will work at my library.